


burn the ice; freeze the flame

by BlurbWriting



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Frank Castle Angst, Gen, Ghosts, Minor Frank Castle/Karen Page, POV Frank Castle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 17:26:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17923181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlurbWriting/pseuds/BlurbWriting
Summary: “In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.”-Laurie Halse AndersonSome ghosts don't leave like they should





	burn the ice; freeze the flame

 

It hurts, a pounding in Frank's head that keeps knocking and knocking and knocking. As his eyes open, he takes in the hospital room. It stinks like sterilization, like rubber gloves and faint puke. How he got here doesn't make sense; he came back over in one piece. As much as he could, anyway.

 

Lolling his head to side, he grins at the hazy sight of warmth, of home.

  
Maria strokes his arm, her lips red and her dress blue. She's always beautiful, smiling at him like this. It's sweeter with each one she gives, and he wants to kiss her now.

  
"Hey you." She says low, squeezing his hand and rubbing across his thumb. He wants to lean in close; he feels like she'd take the pain away, make the knocking stop if he could just press against her.  
Somehow, she's still far away.

"Hey back." He says. He's hoping she'll come closer, and closer. But it doesn't happen. She just stays where she is, holding his hand.There's a strange panic that there's something missing, but Frank doesn't know what.

  
"Where are the kids?" He asks her, raspy. There's a slight ringing as he says this, like a gun went off. Flashes of red; but then Maria's mouth is moving, perfectly stained.

  
She tells him. "They're home. They're waiting for you."

  
It's not enough somehow, that they're not here. Frank isn't sure what really happened. He remembers laugh-turned-screams, holding Lisa in his arms like he can't let go; he can't. But somehow he did, because she's not here and that doesn't sit well.

  
Shifting, Frank sits up to get out of the bed, and his head hurts worse. There's a bandage on his head when he goes to soothe the ache, and then he knows something is very wrong.

  
"What—"

  
Interrupted by the door, a doctor walks in, slightly perturbed to see Frank sitting up. Still, he switches his clipboard into his other arm and holds his hand out for him to shake. Frank takes it.

  
"I see you're doing well, but I'd prefer you lay down. We still have some tests to run."

  
"Tests? Why don't you tell me why I'm here, first off." The anger slips in his voice as easy as pulling a shirt on. There's a hand, familiar and cold on his back, and he tries to loosen.

  
The doctor shifts his weight; he doesn't want to be here. And yet he takes a breath and says to him.

  
"There was an incident you were involved in... do you remember anything about the event?"

  
Frank racks his brain. There's gunfire, bullets littering the ground. He sees Lisa in a flash of red, his wife cold on the ground. He can't see their faces. _Why can't he see their faces?_   He turns around hopelessly, hoping Maria can fill in the blanks. But she's not there. The fact stabs him in the gut.

  
He doesn't hear the doctor, or his heart monitor speeding up. Looking down at his hands and he sees the blood. His family's. He can't stop seeing red.

 

 

By the time Frank figures out what happened, half of them are already dead. There's this freedom in being alone; he doesn't have to answer to anyone, and he doesn't have to pay for his crimes. No one's gonna see him differently now. If he empties a gun in some Irish mobster, no one's there to give a fuck. He doesn't.

  
At the very least, he tells them a storybook.

 

 

When he gets a drill to the foot, Frank feels the adrenaline he's been waiting for. He lets it simmer under his skin, lets it slowly come to a boil. It times itself perfectly with a blown up van of cash, and the rest helps with every heavy step he takes.

  
It builds back up as he limps to Cooley, his red hair darker with blood. Cooley spits at him, but Frank waits. There's questions he needs answers to.

  
"Who killed my family?" It's a groan in his throat, and he feels like roaring.

  
"Your family? Who cares!" Cooley screams at him, and there's no time or energy to waste anymore. If there isn't a face on him anymore, Frank doesn't wait around to check. There's shots being given to him at a speed he doesn't have patience anymore.

  
Taking cover, he breathes; sees the face of his little girl. She hides with him behind the wood.

  
Blood drips down her face, into her mouth. She still smiles that innocent, pretty little smile and asks him. "Will you read it to me again?"

  
Lisa's a begger if he's ever known one. She's not really there, but reading it feels like an apology. It feels like repentance.

  
Nodding, he closes his eyes so he can't see her face strip away, so he can't see her become lifeless as he says the lines.

  
"One batch, two batch, penny and dime."

 

That red devil bastard is everything he can't stand about this world. That there has to be some sort of code for them while the thieves and murderers burn all the guidelines. Frank doesn't care about being us or them or nobody. There's an eye for an eye. Tooth for a tooth. Blood for blood.

  
Despite the horns and covered eyes of that devil, he's a hypocritical alter boy. Frank might be aggravated, to be bleeding out on a grave of Mark J. Something while sirens scream in the distance, but Red's company is one he can't refuse anymore.

  
Red questions him and he spills his guts. He wants to explain their ghosts. He hasn't seen his boy, not yet anyway. He wonders if he avoids his old man to keep the perfect hero image about Frank. That's how Frank prefers it anyway.

  
He sees Maria behind Red, still in her blue dress. He knows it's the one she wore to the park, but he's hoping she might change it up one day; into the yellow sundress she bought on her birthday. She's giving him that sad, knowing smile; like when he went to Afghanistan, like when he'd stare a thousand yards away. Maria still won't leave him, and it's a blessing and a curse to see her standing so far and so very much there. He doesn't look for long; she'll disappear soon anyway.

  
"I'm tired Red." Frank says, after he's done wringing out his horrors. "I'm—I'm tired."

  
Maria's hand is extending out toward him. He feels like he could die. But then the sirens are close and he has to shut his eyes to block out the glaring lights of the police car.  
There's no time to tell her loves her. There's no time to tell her he wishes he were dead.

  
There's a cold brush of fingers across his forehead before he's lifted into an ambulance. It's more than he deserves.

 

 

Karen Page has a lot of fire in her, the justice she wants for him and for his family only fuels his own. Still, it irks him in a way he still can't justify. He was on his own. Now he's got Nelson & Murdock up his ass, defending every vile and murderous thing he's done. He hates their defense as much as he hates the Irish and Dogs of Hell and every other goddamn bastard on this planet.

No, he won't say he's got PTSD. He's seen and done fucked up shit but he knew how to keep himself in check. At least, if he's got any it's not because of war. War was a playground. It was brothers and cold tents; sweat and violence and death and Billy reading Dorian Grey sayin' _think I'm just as pretty as him?_

  
He doesn't want to mention Maria, or his kids. His baby girl and his son. If he says they're still with them, these jackass attorneys will use them, turn them into something they're not. What they're not is his excuse. They're his mission. His sole purpose.

  
He fucks up their case and decides and doesn't need a happy ending. He's fine livin' in a cell and biding his time. Frank knows the rest of them will come to him eventually. Red will find a way to bring them to justice and he can snuff 'em out during lunch time in prison.

  
He ignores Karen's pleading look, compares it to Maria's understanding one. He only needs one woman telling him to do better, and she thinks he already is.

 

The thing about Maria is that even when she's dead, she's still tearing his heart out. It doesn't feel like it used to. She used to give it back after, with shitty blues concert tickets and sweet, gripping sex that he'd take in the middle of a quiet night.

"I missed your sounds." She told him, the night he came home. He missed her too, her home videos nothing like the sweet moans she bit into his shoulder.

  
Now Maria just pulls on it. Pulls and pulls until he's aching with the stretch of it. She's trying to kill Frank and take him with her. She only smiles at him now, though. She's not yelling or fucking or crying. She's just standing there, in his cell, dead.

  
"Hey you." She says like every other time she comes around.

 

He tells her again. "Hey back."

  
If he holds her hand a little looser she doesn't mention it. He's tried talking to her, touching her. Doing anything except for the quiet stares and hand-holding-forehead-touching-longing-moments that they have all the fuckin' time now.

  
She smiles red again, and he can't stand the color.

 

 

Wilson Fisk is a cowardly asshat who wants people to do all the dirty work for him. Frank thinks he'd look better with a milky eye. Nonetheless, when he refuses and has his little army of douchebags at his caged door, he doesn't hesitate. Each and every one of them get the dead look in his eye, the instinctual combat that's been embedded into his body killing every single one of them. He's drenched in their blood, their flesh sticking on his hands and he looks Fisk in the eye. They're rotting on the inside; and it's not worth it.

 

Sitting on that rooftop, he sees Red lose his partner. It's obvious that he loved her, because he's not fighting to subdue; it's to end them. Finally, they have something in common. It's not something Frank's proud to share, though. Still, he helps Red fight through the faceless fighters, lets him after the big man. It's what Frank would want, after all.

 

There's an incline of a head from Red, seen through the scope of his rifle. Frank thinks he knows who he is, but everyone's got their shit and it really isn't his business.

  
Finishing up the rest of the bikers, the cartel, the whole Kitchen Irish-it's like flicking his wrist. Some tried to squirm away, like rats in a cage. But there's a reason he was nicknamed The Punisher. It wasn't to his liking, but it suited Frank. The name fit him like a body bag over a corpse.

  
Still, he throws his skull-covered vest in flames. 'Thing about being Frank, is that when a job's done, a job is done. There's no fuckin around or trying to take on the next asshole coming his way. His families dead. So are they. Ain't no one left they can come after.

  
On the other side of the fire, his boy's face burns bright, toothy grin shoved up on his face all silly.

  
"You killed the Irish, huh?" Little Frank says, all proud and puffing his chest out. "Good riddance."

  
He tsks at his boy. He should've known. His kid's gotta thing for violence, even being brutally murdered by it. Still. Shouldn't ever be talking like killing's a good thing. Even if Frank thinks it's a good thing.

 

"You watch your mouth, Junior." His voice is gruff. "All life means something. Even if we don't want it to."

  
"Even I meant something?"

  
It's a bizarre question; one that makes him take a step forward. The flames heat his face, and he tilts his head to mirror Little Frank. He's got his mother's eyes.

  
"Of course you did, Frankie. You meant the most."

  
Frank Castle Jr. is a bigger shit than his father, saluting too tilted and loose to be right. It's the first time Frank himself has laughed in a long while.

 

 

It should be tiring, to be caught time and time again in the middle of someone else's shit. The construction assholes always talkin' a big game, and of course they end up being just a warm up for Frank. The gang they stole from isn't too hard either. It's still a breath of fresh air when he pulls the trigger on the last man, and if he enjoys watching it all the on the news, he doesn't tell.

  
Maria doesn't need to be told that he enjoys it, and she pulls on his heart again. "Did they deserve it?"

  
"I wanted to do it." He tells her, and finds her hand next to his on the bed. It gets colder everyday.

 

 

Micro ends up being David Lieberman. A skinny prick stalking his family while trying to take down the assholes that shot him. Frank doesn't need him, no matter what the fuck he says. He's killed everybody just fine up until now. And he'll keep doing it. There's still rage sitting tight in his chest, ready to be let out at any given moment.

  
He's not ready to admit that he just doesn't want anybody with him. He's stuck in this hole, like Curtis said. He's found a home in it; he doesn't like trespassers. He'd rather shoot someone than let them into his hole, and Lieberman is getting too close to the edge of it.

  
Still, at the end of the day Frank can't get rid of him. He knows Lieberman will follow him to the ends of this stenched up Earth just to get the help he needs. Can't even shoot a goddamn gun properly.  
When he visits David's wife Sarah, he imagines Maria being just like her. Maybe a bit tougher; she knew he was coming home. He wasn't the type to be left stranded or dead. But it stings something special when he sees the puffiness, the tired circles around Sarah's eyes. She's not well, and thinks to himself that David fucked up.

  
There's a pile waiting to be donated by her front door, cluttered and in a ripped box. He sees button up shirts and glass-less picture frames, with _One Batch, Two Batch_ sitting on top. Instinctively he grabs it, sees the crayon scribbled on all the pages, destroying some of the words in the process.

  
"Oh, yeah. I really should've just thrown that away." Sarah says while tucking her hair back. She's so soft and shy around him that Frank feels a little more loose around her. It's nice, even when they belong to other people.

  
He holds the book up, nodding. "Mind if I take it?"

  
She nods back, a little confused, before she soothes her expression into an understanding. They all have things they don't talk about. Things that just are.

  
Frank keeps the book in the dash of his van, underneath all the junk papers and jerky he stores. It's not like he'll read it. He won't miss it if it's gone. It's no one else's business if he imagines Lisa in the seat next to him, letting her hair fly from road wind and getting it tangled in the seat belt. No one else's business at all.

 

"Bill..." He knows that Beaut's voice anywhere. Knows that sly, catwalk step he takes anywhere. It's a betrayal. Not by his country, not by some dick-jerking gangster emptying a gun into his wife. Not even the man who ordered it. It's _Billy_.

  
It makes all the cuts sting worse, all the bruises more purple. His arm snaps out of socket at the end of the stairwell, the way his heart snaps in two. Billy, his brother in arms, his brother for life. What's that say about Frank, not even knowing he aided in killing his family?

  
When he catches up to Karen and Lewis, it's barely contained grief that guides the anger in his voice. All these fuckin assholes and their decisions to hurt his own. He knows Lewis isn't walking out of this one, especially after Karen shoots him and backs the fuck away.

  
It's fucked. He stares Lewis down to plug in the white wire. He's gonna look him in the eye, like a soldier. He wonders if Billy did that too; if he tried to find his eyes through the scope. Was he there? Did Bill pull the trigger?

  
The tears in his eyes are barely there but they sting. Everything hurts. He can imagine Lewis feels that way too. Frank hears his mantra through the door faintly, and pulls away before he gets knocked off too bad.

  
Karen cares too much, and he loves—he hates that she can still look at him so tenderly, even with a broken nose and his head grazed. She's touching her forehead to his as soon as the elevator closes, and her hands touch him warm despite their shakiness. He's longed to feel anything other than cold.

  
He still can't let go. The icy hands are at his back again and he pulls away. Karen's biting her lip and what he wouldn't do right now to just let go.

 

There's no time for love, in a place like this anyway. He leaves her in that elevator, doesn't give her a way to contact him again. Maybe, at a better time, he could try. Maybe, he could let go.

 

 

Tied to a chair and being slapped by a bitch isn't how Frank saw his day going, but he wasn't expecting apple pie either. He's still carrying a hurt knowing Billy knew about this all along, and no wonder Maria doesn't show herself here, in this room. She loved Billy, too.

  
Rawlins is a goddamn psycho, hard in his slacks as he punches the lights out of Frank, makes his mouth full of his own broken, bloody teeth. Frank prays to god Billy makes Rawlins get off somewhere else, ain't no way he's gonna be a dead man with jizz on his chest.

  
Consciousness leaves him at some point, and Maria's there. She's in her wedding dress this time, daring him with her eyes to let them dance. He lets her twirl them around, he lets her cheek press into his shoulder. He lets himself miss her completely.

  
"I'm sorry," He starts off. "I didn't know. I didn't know what—."

  
She's shushing him gently, a hand softly caressing down his face.

  
"It's alright, Frank. We're all safe here in this place."

  
What _this place is_ isn't clarified, whether it's his own mind or in the barrier between life and death. He doesn't let go of her. She's in his arms, and he doesn't want to leave right now.

  
"How are the kids?" He asks her as soft as he's ever been, sweeping her off her feet and into a dip. She's laughing light, squeezing onto his bicep as he pulls her back up.

  
She whispers it in his ear as they slow to a small step-by-step. "They're doing just fine. Lisa's reading. Harry Potter, if you could believe it." She laughs again. "Little Frankie is doing good too. Football or basketball or whatever sport he wants to try out next."

  
Frank laughs with her, because, of course Lisa's moving onto chapter books. And Junior, his son's gotta be the best on whatever team he's on in whatever sport. He's a Castle, after all.

  
It's disorienting, when he comes back to. He's about to call out her name when he hears Billy shushing him instead. He wipes at the blood on Frank's mouth.

  
When Frank looks up at him, he sees something in Billy's eyes that he doesn't know how to interpret. They're brown, of course. They don't hate Frank, and it's not warmth that they hold. Billy's never really had warmth to begin with.

  
It should be enough, to know that Billy wasn't there. But he knew, and the silence of his brother definitely helped fire those guns; helped murder his family.

  
Billy's brother enough still to promise him one last thing. Even if it's the kind of thing you promise on the planes of a foreign land instead of where they are now. It's messed up and Frank's just tired.  
There's no effort to stay alive at this point, with Rawlins coming back at him. He's threatening to take an eye, after all of Frank's ribs are busted and his insides feel fresh out of a blender. He feels the swollen skin of his cheeks, the broken skin.

  
Maria's cold hands are on his back, and they're back in _this place_. She's turning him around, back in her blue dress, her lips as red as the rest of him right now. She's pulling him towards her, not just his heart this time. He can hear Frank Jr. laughing somewhere, and Maria's still pulling.

  
"Come on." She says, and she's excited. He wonders where she's taking them. There's no way to know, no way to know which direction or which surprise she has in store for him. He follows her.  
Distantly there's Rawlins slapping on Frank's chest, boom, boom. Frank can't hear it. But there's David and Sarah and their kids sitting at a table to the right of Frank. Curtis is pulling out a chair to sit with them. They have a cake sitting atop the table, awaiting to be cut.

  
It doesn't make sense.

  
"Come join us!" Sarah holds out a cake knife for him, and they all agree with her in unison.

 

Maria tugs on his arm again. "No, stay here." She says, like a desperate prayer.

  
"Come home." Like a sad song.

  
It's unexpected, the hesitancy he holds. Maria's dead. He'll be too if he follows her. But following Maria gives him his wife back, his kids. Hell, maybe even a dog if Frank Jr. begged enough.  
He looks over to his right again, and sees the pleasant smiles on all their faces. They've seen Frank, all of him, too. They want him around.

  
Rawlins is bringing him back into the world, a man not quite ready to blow his load on Frank. Frank doesn't want it to happen either.

  
Maria insists again. "Please, quick, Frank. Make your choice. Come home."

  
It's the hardest thing he's ever done. He's always taken her hand in his, but he's never let go of it. Never, ever. It's a lifeline he's not willing to give up,

  
And yet, he finds that he is willing,

  
"I am home."

  
-

  
Some ghosts don't leave like they should. Sometimes they possess your soul. A man like Frank has seen plenty of ghosts. They drove him to a compulsive need to take and take and take like they took from him. But there's a choice to give. And he gave. To Lieberman; his family. To Curtis; a new leg. To Dinah; a chance to live.

  
And to himself; a chance to live free.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So like :/ I was getting really worked up over Maria Castle and how Frank uses his family to be the Punisher and you know what you can interpret whether or not they were actually there but either way Maria definitely is and will always be an important part of how Frank keeps himself sane (Or does she make him fucked up?) and I wish there was more on Frank Jr. because Frank Sr. himself definitely had a favorite and that was his baby girl.


End file.
